


all the trouble I have caused

by SandM1827



Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 06:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20092519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandM1827/pseuds/SandM1827
Summary: "I am past the point of fear. Now I'm just pissed off."[4x10 Exit Strategy]





	all the trouble I have caused

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd.  
Warnings: Mentions of past child abuse.  
Story title comes from: [Hallelujah by Reuben and the Dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kpwggOIEQI)  
Gif sets: [Smurf Knows](https://stilinski-ortiz-dolan.tumblr.com/post/186671437686/animal-kingdom-au-scene-smurf-knows-you-know), [Talking](https://stilinski-ortiz-dolan.tumblr.com/post/186645937801/animal-kingdom-au-scene-talking), [Adrian](https://stilinski-ortiz-dolan.tumblr.com/post/186688345416/animal-kingdom-au-scene-adrian-help-me-protect)

Deran had been quiet since Smurf's party. He wasn't intentionally giving Adrian the silent treatment, he just wasn't sure what to say. He couldn't ask for more time to figure things out, couldn't reassure Adrian that things would work out, not now that Smurf knew. Retreating into himself was the easiest option.

He'd sat on the deck all night, smoking through a pack of cigarettes while looking out at the water, searching the ocean waves for answers. Adrian hadn't gone to bed either, Deran had watched him sit at the kitchen table when they got home and never heard him rise or head off to bed. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon when Deran finally shuffled into the house.

"Smurf knows," There was no question in Adrian's words, it was a simple fact spoken in a flat, resigned tone. "She knows I was working with the feds, right?"

"The hug give it away?" It was bad joke, an ill attempt to sound casual, but Deran didn't know what the hell to say.

"Yeah, actually," The barest hint of a smile tugged the corners of Adrian's lips. "She's never hugged me before."

"Yeah," Any sign of affection from Deran's mother was usually a gigantic red flag. "You want coffee?"

"It's gonna be you or Pope, right?" Adrian asked meekly, glancing up at Deran through his lashes. "She has or will task one of you to handle me or something."

"You're mine, my responsibility, so she wants me to do it," It would be his punishment for bringing Adrian into their family, for loving him. "But if I can't, she'll tell Pope what's going on and he'll do it."

"Tell Pope what's going on...," Adrian scoffed, shaking his head. "That when the cops asked me about you, I kept my mouth shut and I told them to charge me? Is that what Smurf's going to tell him? Or will she just say I talked to the cops and let Pope fill in the blanks with the worst case scenario?"

"It doesn't matter to Smurf that you didn't flip on us," In Deran's mind that should have made Adrian more trustworthy, not less. "You talked to the feds about someone, doesn't matter who or why. The cops are questioning you about us. To her, to Pope, you're just a liability we don't need."

"'_We_'?"

"The family," Deran's trust in Adrian was shaken, yeah, but it was still there. He still trusted Adrian more than he did most people, including certain members of his family. "You don't have to worry about Smurf or Pope. I'm gonna figure something out."

"There's nothing to figure out, Deran," Adrian took a deep breath, coming to some kind of decision. "I want to talk to Pope."

"No. No, you can't do that," No good could come of that, not ever. "That's not a going to happen."

"I'll confess. I'll tell him I ratted on some asshole about shit that has nothing to do with your family," Adrian said bitterly, standing from the table. "Then I'll go with him to the desert, let him do what Smurf wants him to do."

"No."

"I won't fight what has to happen, but I won't let it be you, Deran," Adrian's brave face was only contradicted by the tears welling in his eyes. "You know, Pearce was right. I won't last six months in prison. Pope will be a mercy."

"I said no," Deran shook his head, trying to banish Adrian's words from his mind. "You're not...you're not handing yourself over to them."

"Deran--"

"No!" Deran shouted, the deceptively calm demeanor he'd created to replace his violent temper disintegrated in the face of the one person he'd built it for. "You are not talking to anybody. I will figure something out. Do you understand?"

"Deran, I told you what was going on, because I was tired of lying to you, not so you could fix everything," Adrian kept his voice low, even, a striking contrast to Deran's own. "This is my life, Deran. My life. My mistake. My choice."

"You are not going to talk to Pope," Deran laid out the order as clearly and concisely as he could. "You are not going to talk to anyone. You are going to stay in this house and let me deal with this."

"No, I'm not," Adrian put his foot down, lifting his chin defiantly. "But let's say I agree not to go to Pope. How long do you think I have until Pope comes looking for me? Couple hours? Couple days?"

"I-I don't know," Deran faltered, heart stuttering in his chest. "Why?"

"There are just some things I want to get in order," Adrian hunched his shoulders, letting go of whatever fight he had left in him. "Make sure anything in my name is transferred into my sister’s, stuff like that."

"Shut up, Adrian. J-Just shut up," Deran didn't want to hear any talk like that. "Don't go anywhere, okay? L-Let me figure this out."

"Maybe this would work better if we figured it out together," Adrian argued rationally. "What do you think you're going to do that we haven't already done?"

"I don't know," If Deran had more than a night to think about it, he might've had a better game plan worked out, or any game plan. "Smurf wants you dead."

"Yeah, I knew that the moment she put her arms around me," Adrian muttered, wrapping his arms around himself. "Let's be real, she's wanted me dead since the moment she realized you wanted my attention more than hers."

"Oh, come on, we were like three then," Deran joked, trying to breaking the tension. "She probably would have tried to drown you in the pool if she thought she could make it look like an accident."

"It's a good thing I've always been such a good swimmer," Adrian quipped, shifting on his feet. "Shit, Deran. I gave her the perfect excuse for her to do what's she has always wanted to do, didn't I? 'Cause this thing, it's got nothing to do with me being a liability. It's about me and you and her. She wants me out of the way, and now she's got a reason to take to Pope to get it done."

"There's only one way this ends," Deran had fought so hard to keep that thought out of his head, but now the only choice they had was to face it head on. "You have to leave. You have to leave town."

"What? No."

"If you stay, you're dead," Deran couldn't let that happen. "This is the only option you have."

"If I leave, I'll miss my court date. I'll be a fugitive. Fifteen years will turn into, what, twenty-five? Thirty?" Adrian paled, looking nauseous. "I could never come home. I could never see my family again."

"You won't be able to see your family if you’re dead, either," Deran resisted the urge to raise his voice again. "Look, we can figure out a way to keep you in contact with Jess. Drop phones or something, shit that's untraceable."

"What about your family, Deran? Hmm?" Adrian asked, fidgeting anxiously with the hem of his shirt. "If I disappear, voluntarily or by Pope's hand, the cops are gonna look to you. They'll think you aided and abetted me or that you killed me."

"I don't care."

"I do."

* * *

Adrian, like Deran, had never really liked kids, even when Deran's nephew and niece were little they had both done their best to avoid them and any responsibility regarding them if at all possible. Adrian's own niece, Charlie, seemed to be the exception to the rule. Somehow, the little squirt had managed to worm her way past whatever childproof defenses he had.

"You're just the calmest kid in the world, aren't you," Adrian murmured, cradling her close, allowing the motion of the rocking chair loll her to sleep. "Wonder where you get that from."

"You were the same way when you were a baby," Jess mentioned, leaning against the doorway to the nursery. "From what I remember, anyway."

"She's not quite out yet," He could see the baby blinking with heavy eyes. "She's fighting it."

"I'm happy to see you getting in some uncle/niece time while you have it," Jess smiled softly at the pair. "But I thought Deran would've had you surgically attached to his hip until your sentencing hearing."

"I just wanted to see you guys," Adrian didn't know how long he had before Smurf sent the hounds for him, he needed to take what little time he had left to find some closure. "Deran had a private meeting, didn't tell me who with. I didn't want to be alone."

"What's going on, Adrian?" Jess asked, moving to sit on the daybed positioned against the wall across from the crib. "Something else has happened, hasn't it?"

"No."

"Don't you dare lie to me."

"Smurf knows everything," He didn't have to tell her what that meant, anyone who grew up in Oceanside during the Cody matriarch's reign knew what to expect from her. "She knows I was talking to the feds."

"So?" Jess paused, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "That was about Jack. It had nothing to do with her family, unless the Codys are back in the drug game."

"They're not," Not to the best of Adrian's knowledge, anyway. "It doesn't matter to her who I was talking to the cops about. It's that I was talking to them at all."

"No, it's not," Jess frowned. "It's about you and Deran. You're pulling him away, so she wants you gone."

"Pretty much, yeah," That was the short and skinny of it. "She wants Deran to handle me."

"Oh, please," Jess rolled her eyes. "Deran's never handled a damn thing is his life. He makes problems, he doesn't fix them."

"I am one of his problems, in Smurf's eyes," As it was, he had been a perpetual thorn in Smurf's side since he was a small child, now he was something far more dangerous because he chose be with her son. "Pope will be the one. I won't let it be Deran."

"You won't let it be Deran," Jess mulled the statement over. "Did you ever think, maybe, there's an alternative to letting it be either of them?"

"If you're going to tell me to run--"

"Talk to Pope," Jess suggested. "He's balanced now, right?"

"More or less," The eldest of the Cody brothers was not as unhinged as he had once been. "Deran says he's been calmer since Angela came back around."

"Not Julia's friend Angela..."

"Yeah," That was the only Angela Adrian knew with a connection to the Codys. "Why? What's your beef with her?"

"You don't remember? You couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 at the time," Jess recalled. "Julia had the bright idea to take Deran and her kid to Disneyland, but Deran wouldn't go without you. Angela was with her when she came to get you. You were gone three days before you finally called home, said Julia and Angela had bailed, left you and Deran with the kid."

"Disneyland turned out to be some drug dealers house in Van Nuys," That weekend was one Adrian tried for years to forget. "You and Pope came to get us."

"You're just lucky Pongo the drug dealer had kids," Jess huffed. "If he didn't, he might've tried to put you to work one way or another instead of letting you make a phone call when Julia and Angela didn't come back."

"Yeah, it all worked out in the end," That weekend hadn't been all sunshine and roses, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. "Hey, wait. Is that why you gave Julia and Angela beat downs at Smurf's 4th of July party?"

"It wasn't really a fair fight," Jess shrugged. "They were both high. I had the advantage of being sober and very pissed off about them abandoning my baby brother in a crack house."

"I'm surprised Pope let you do it," From what Adrian remembered, Pope couldn't have cared less about Deran and Craig when they were kids, but his sister was a different story. "He was pretty protective of the girls."

"Pope and I had an understanding," Jess tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "He knew they'd fucked up. If things were reversed, I'd be the one getting my ass kicked, and rightfully so."

"So you and Pope had some sort of, what, older siblings code?"

"Something like that, yeah," Jess nodded. "He's not entirely unreasonable, Adrian."

"No offense or anything, but it's been a long time since you and Pope were friends," If they were ever really friends. "Pope's not the same person."

"No, he's not," Jess agreed. "From what you've told me, he actually looks out for his brother now, that is a recent development."

"I think we can thank Baz for that," The adopted Codys death had been a catalyst, had strengthened the bond between the remaining brothers. "If you're trying to tell me to plead my case to Pope, I was already planning to confess to him."

"I'm sure Deran loves that idea," Jess snorted. "If Pope cares about Deran, if he believes Deran actually cares about you--"

"From your tone, I'm guessing you don't believe Deran's cares about me."

"Smurf's dying, right? That news has been spreading all over town like a wildfire," Jess didn't sound or appear the least bit sympathetic to Smurf's plight. "So what she wants doesn't matter in the long term. Pope can choose Deran over her. If he believes Deran cares about you, he can choose not to follow her orders to hurt you. He can choose what's best for Deran, and that's keeping you alive."

"The Codys aren't like us, Jess. We walked away from our toxic family. We spend as little time with them as possible," Adrian and his sister had gathered the strength to put distance between them and their parents years ago, despite the fears and uncertainty that decision came with. "Smurf conditioned them to care about her wellbeing over all others. Her love for them hinges upon how well they follow their orders. As much as they try to deny it, they are all still little boys looking for mommy's love. Knowing that she's dying is only going to push them back into her web, not further away from it."

"You think Pope will kill you to fulfill Smurf's last wishes?"

"Maybe."

"You leave town, you're a fugitive," Jess came to the same conclusions he had earlier in the morning. "If you stay, Smurf will have Pope or someone else kill you under the guise that you're rat."

"Yep."

"You haven't said anything to the cops about them, right?"

"Right," Although, at this point, Adrian would turn on Smurf for a chocolate chip cookie if he didn't think she'd roll on Deran in retaliation. "It wasn't easy to rat on Jack, okay? I did that mostly out of spite. I told him the board he gave me was too heavy, he ignored me. I couldn't exactly give it back once he put it my car. I didn't get to change my mind and walk away in the eleventh hour, you know? I would've had knowledge of their business but no skin in the game. I would've been a threat. They would've killed me."

"What you did with Jack is irrelevant to this Cody shit," Jess waved a dismissive hand at any mention of the drug supplier. "You haven't done anything to the Codys to justify an execution. The only thing you have done is protect them. To protect _**Deran**_. You have protected him over all others, including yourself, despite the damage he's done to you."

"Jess--"

"You know, when I got the call from the hospital two years ago, after you were found beat up in that restroom, I knew Deran was responsible," Jess sneered, clenching her fists. "I sat by your hospital bed all night. I was there when the cops showed up to talk to you. You were loopy on pain meds, but you still managed to lie through your teeth, tell them no one hurt you, you were just clumsy, slipped and fell on some wet tile."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"When poor Dave was dumped two miles out to sea, you came to me, frustrated and scared. You finally realized how far Deran would go to keep you all to himself. He showed his true colors to you, proved just how much of his mother's son he really was," Jess remarked, contempt dripping off her every word. "And instead of protecting yourself, you convinced Dave not to cooperate with the cops. You told him to tell the cops he didn't remember anything."

"That was for Dave," Adrian would carry the guilt over that situation for the rest of his life. "If he had ID'd the person who hurt him, they would have done whatever they had to do to silence him."

"It was for Dave, a little, but it was also for Deran and whichever brother he sent to do his dirty work," Jess voiced her disapproval for the way Adrian had handled that situation, and any others involving Deran. "Deran put you in the hospital, he had one of his brothers try to kill an innocent guy you were involved with. He crosses line after line and you protect him every single time."

"What's your point?" He could push back, list off all the ways Deran has changed, but his sister wouldn't care, she'd made up her mind about Deran after that bathroom beat down, and nothing could make that right in her mind.

"It is time to protect yourself," Jess declared. "If Smurf's going to have you killed because you've talked to the cops, even though you haven't talked to them about her or her boys, maybe it's time you start. You tell the cops enough to yourself put in protective custody--"

"No," His love and loyalty to Deran just ran too deeply to betray it. "The only person that would hurt is Deran and his brothers and I'm not going to do that to them."

"Adrian –“

"No," It wasn't something Adrian was going to argue about, it was the way things were going to be. "I'd be playing right into Smurf's hands."

"How the fuck does Smurf even know you were talking to the feds, anyway?" Jess asked, furrowing her brows. "It's not something you would share with her."

“A few weeks back, one of Smurf's sources warned her someone was talking to the cops," Adrian didn't know the specifics, hadn't prompted Deran to give him more details. "I guess she had that source or another look further into it."

"But you didn't say anything to the cops about them," Jess's face twisted in confusion. "They talked to you, but you didn't talk to them. You didn't give them anything, so there's nothing to warn Smurf about."

"I think I just got caught in the crossfire," Adrian would bet Pearce had his name somewhere in his files regarding with the Codys, as a connection to Deran perhaps, but not as a source of information. "Someone out there is feeding the cops information about the Codys."

"If Smurf has your name, she definitely has theirs," Jess deduced easily. "The question is, if she knows this person is talking, and that you didn't, why is your name the only one she's sharing with her boys?"

* * *

Worst case scenarios were the only thing Deran could see when Adrian was in the same vicinity as him. Once he was free of that distraction, once he was in the Scout and on the road, the smoke clouding his mind had begun to disperse. Ideas and plans began to formulate with each passing street sign, by the time he actually made it to his destination, he knew who had to get on his side if he wanted Adrian to survive.

"Where's Pope?" He didn't waste time to greet his mother, coming across her in the kitchen while looking for his eldest brother. "He missed his shift at the bar."

"Have you handled your situation yet?" Smurf ignored his question in favor of asking him one of her own. "Or do I need to get Pope to clean up your mess?"

"Adrian's not a mess that needs to be cleaned up," Deran had been too caught off guard the night before to push back against his mother's accusations against his boyfriend, but he'd found clarity in the morning light. "He didn't give the cops anything on our family. So give it a rest."

"Detective Pearce has been talking to him," Smurf revealed, and Deran wondered if she thought that was new information to him. "Do I need to explain to you what that means? Pearce has been trying to get to our family for years. Now, he's talking to your boyfriend."

"Pearce has talked to me too," Deran wondered if his own name popped up beside Adrian's in whatever file her source looked at since he and Adrian had given Pearce the same amount of information: none. "You gonna have me taken out too?"

"Adrian isn't family, baby," Smurf sidled close to him until they were standing chest-to-chest. "If the cops are talking to him, he's a threat."

"If the cops are_** talking to him**_," That was an accurate choice of words. "So you know he hasn't been talking to them."

"It's only a matter of time," Smurf said matter-of-factly. "Adrian is weak."

"Adrian was given a chance to save himself in exchange for our family and he chose to keep his mouth shut," That had to count for something. "He has made a lot of mistakes these last few months, but none of it has blown back on us."

"He put us back on Pearce's radar."

"No, his connection to us put him on Pearce's radar," Deran doubted his family was ever far from Pearce's mind. "He had a deal with the DEA. He was only going to do a couple of years until Pearce came in and screwed it all up. His deal is dead because of he won't give us up."

"I never understood your fascination with that little street rat, but I am not going to let it bring down everything I've built," Smurf snapped, gripping his chin between her fingers. "I gave you an order. You will deal with Adrian or Pope will. Do I need to go talk to Pope?"

"You're a dead woman walking, Smurf, but you might as well be dead already for how much I care about your orders," Deran spit at his mother, feeling an odd sense of calm wash over him. "You wanna whisper more lies and half-truths into Pope's ear, be my guest, but don't be surprised when he calls bullshit. And it is bullshit."

"If it's not Pope, it'll just be someone else, baby."

"Pearce offered me a deal, too. He told me if I gave you up, he would convince the DEA to honor the terms of Adrian's original deal," Pearce hadn't mentioned Smurf specifically, but Deran didn't think she needed to know that. "So let's make a deal, Mom. You leave Adrian alone and I won't go telling your fan-boy about all the jobs you've had me pull since I was old enough to read."

"You wouldn't do that to your brothers."

"You're right, I wouldn't," Deran had no intention of involving his brother's in any of it. "I would do it to you."

"Your barks always been worse than your bite," Smurf patted his cheek condescendingly. "You could never hurt me, no matter how much you wanted to."

"If something happens to Adrian. If he gets beat up, the brakes in his truck are cut, if he has any kind of accident, I'm going to assume you were behind it," He would bet his life that she would be. "If you have him hurt, if you have him killed, I will make sure you spend what's left of your miserable life in a cell."

"You think your brothers would let you do that?" Smurf asked, tilting her head to the side. "Hmm? You think they would let you choose him over me? You think they would condemn their sick mother over your rat of a boyfriend?"

"I know what you're doing, Smurf. You're manipulating the facts, editing the story until it fits your narrative. It's what you've always done under the pretense that it'll protect the family in the long run, but it was really to protect you and your bottom line. It was to keep us in line," She had forced them to do awful things to build her empire, all the while knowing she had never given them the skills to properly deal with the fallout. "But now you're dying. You want to go to your grave knowing you're still pulling the strings. You are going to dole out as much damage as possible and leave us scrambling to pick up the pieces. Well, I'm not going to let you kick off your bloody goodbye tour with Adrian."

* * *

There was a time when flashing lights in his rearview mirror would have made Adrian nervous, now it just annoyed the hell out of him. It wasn't a black & white ordering him to the side of the road, Adrian noticed as he obediently pulled his truck over to the shoulder, it was an unmarked SUV with an aggravatingly familiar face behind the wheel.

"Give me a fucking break," Adrian resisted the urge to pound his fist against the steering wheel as he rolled down the window. "What the hell now?"

"Afternoon, Mr. Dolan," Pearce leaned down to speak to him. "You want to step out of the vehicle?"

"Do I have a choice?" Adrian wrenched the driver-side door open, narrowly avoiding slamming it against the detective's legs. "What do you want?”

“You’re not taking my calls.”

“Well, my answers to your questions haven't changed since the last time we talked."

"You sure about that?" Pearce flashed him a smug smile. "'Cause I have spoken to Deran since the last time you and I met. I gave him a chance to save you."

"I'm aware," Deran had mentioned the cop had come by the bar. "And?"

"He didn’t say no, but he didn’t say yes."

"Good," The last thing Adrian wanted to do was pit Deran against his family. "Is that all you had to say?"

"You're looking at fifteen years, Adrian."

"Why do you keep telling me things I already know?"

"I'm glad to see you've decided to drop the scared little bird act," Pearce said, appearing mildly amused by the turn. "It suited you, but the more I looked into you, the less I bought it."

"Oh, I am past the point of fear. Now I'm just pissed off," Mostly at himself, but that was no one's business but his own. "Are you going to tell me what you want or can I go?"

"I want to help you."

"No, you want to use me," There was a huge difference. "If you thought giving my name to Smurf was going to force my hand or something--"

"What are you talking about?" Pearce tensed, his smug smile replaced by a troubled frown. "I haven't spoken to Smurf since she was released to prison."

"Oh, please," Adrian rolled his eyes. "If the Codys were really the criminal masterminds you want me to believe they are, then they've got to have someone in your department looking out for them. And since you are the one who has been glued to their every move, probably since before Deran and I were even born, then I'm guessing that someone is you."

"I have been busting my ass to build a case against the Codys since before I made detective."

"Yet somehow, you've never managed to make anything stick. That's convenient," Speaking as someone who had known the Codys his entire life, Adrian knew for a fact that the brothers would have been in jail years ago if not for Smurf cleaning up after them, paying off witnesses to forget what or who they saw and crime scene techs to lose evidence. "Personally, I don't believe a word you've said about them. I've known them forever, if they were crooks, I think I would've picked up on that. But, for arguments sake, let's say they are, that would make you the inside man. So, I've got to ask, how much did Smurf pay you to put this play with me in motion?"

"I never took a dime from Janine Cody."

"Oh, so you're doing this for free," Adrian couldn't decide if that comforting or insulting. "Just a simple favor between old friends then, huh?"

"What are you even talking about?" Pearce glowered at him. "What is it that you think I've done to you for Janine?"

"Smurf has been trying to get me out of the way, permanently, for longer than I care to admit," Adrian wasn't quite sure how much of his and Deran's history Pearce was privy to, and he wasn't going to offer up details for free. "Deran wanting me more than her wasn't a good enough reason to justify it to anyone but herself, but, if she's really a crime lord, as you claim, then I guess painting me as the rat scurrying around her family would certainly do the trick."

"Someone told Smurf you were talking to me," Pearce determined, realization dawning on him. "Now you've got a price on your head."

"Except I haven't been talking to you, you've been talking to me," That was an important distinction Adrian was dead set on making sure everyone knew. "I don't know what bullshit you've got in your files about me, or what you told Smurf--"

"I have you listed as two things in my files:_** known associate of Deran Cody**_ and _**uncooperative**_," The detective ticked off the items on his fingers. "_**Uncooperative**_ speaks for itself, doesn't it? Says you refuse to give up your boyfriend or his family."

"And you thought giving Smurf my name, potentially putting my head on the chopping block would, what, make me more willing to cooperate?" If that was what the dude believed, boy did he have another thing coming. "You've had me meet you in public places, where anyone who knows me and my connection to the Codys could see us, could take that information back to Smurf. I kind of think you are actively trying to put me in danger so that I have to go to you for help in exchange for my agreement to go along with whatever lies you've cooked about the Codys."

"If you really thought they were lies, you wouldn't be so worried," Pearce acknowledged, that cocky smirk returning to his face. "I can take you in right now, put you in protective custody, but you'll need to tell me everything you know."

"Here's the thing: I do not know anything," Even if he did, he couldn't prove anything, so what the hell did it matter? "Handing me to Smurf doesn't change that."

"You're gonna stand by your man and his family, fine, it's your funeral," Pearce threw his hands in the air. "But you should know, I am not the one who gave Smurf your name. I am the one who can help you stay alive, if, by some chance, you happen to develop self-preservation instincts before Smurf makes you disappear."

“So long as you remember it was her that made me disappear, not one of her boys.”

* * *

Challenging Smurf was going to come back to bite him in the ass, Deran was sure of that, but it didn't change his mission. Pope was the one person in his family he needed on his side if he wanted to keep the target off Adrian's back, and Deran wasn’t going to leave until his brother agreed to help him.

"You weren't at the bar," Deran grumbled as he joined his oldest brother in the garage. "I needed to talk to you in private."

"Well, I just saw Smurf pull out of here," Pope gestured through the open garage door to the empty space where Smurf's car had been. "No one else is home."

"Okay," That was as private as Deran could hope for. "Look, I know you've been back on Smurf's bullshit since you found out she was sick, but I need you to remember that it doesn't change who she is. Okay? I need you to be my brother right now, not her enforcer."

"You're scared," Pope commented, dark eyes searching Deran's face for an explanation. "What's going on?"

"Smurf's gonna tell you Adrian's been talking to the cops about us," There was no way to phrase it that would make it sound any better. "She's going to tell you to kill him."

"Is he talking to the cops?" Pope was willing to give Adrian the benefit of the doubt, that was a good sign.

"Not about us," Deran knew that wouldn't make as much a difference as it should have on its own. "He got into some trouble a while back. He was looking at over a decade inside. He flipped on the person he was working for under the assumption he would get immunity. Except Pearce stepped in, got the fed in charge to pull Adrian's deal unless Adrian talked to him about us."

"Pearce," The muscles in Pope's face tightened at the name. "Has Adrian told him anything? Even something he thinks is innocent?"

"The only thing he told Pearce is to charge him," Deran had nearly popped Adrian upside the head for that stupidity. "He could've rolled on us for a reduced sentence, but he didn't."

"What kind of trouble did he get himself into?" Pope asked, folding his arms over his chest. "How long is he going away for?"

"Fifteen years," The thought of Adrian locked in a cage for that long was more than enough to send icy spikes of terror through Deran's heart. "For, uh, drug trafficking and distribution."

"Jack's crew," Pope accurately guessed. "I heard something about them getting rounded up."

"He was scared, Pope," Honestly, Deran couldn't blame Adrian for trying to save his own ass. "And he told Jack the board they gave him was too heavy, they had him take it anyway."

"It's not like he could give it back once he agreed to work for them," Pope nodded, accepting the excuses Deran was offering up. "We've all done stupid shit with stupid people like Jack, Deran. We didn't turn rat."

"We do shit with family," They may not have always gotten along, but the blood they shared kept their mouths shut. "And Smurf has always been there with a stack of cash and a threat to get us out of whatever trouble we were in. If we did do time, it was because she saw we made a mistake on a job or she was trying to punish us for something. She was in control the whole time. Adrian doesn't have that. He doesn't have a mother with the connections ours does."

"You and Adrian got into all sorts of trouble together in high school, dealing pot, stealing cars, but never anything that came with the same kind of sentence he's getting with that drug trafficking charge," Pope noted, voice absent of any judgment. "None of them paid as well as trafficking either. What'd he need that kind of money for?"

"He said he didn't want to take money from me anymore. His pride was taking a hit, I guess," Deran didn't buy that bullshit excuse when Adrian had given it to him, and the longer it sat between them, the less Deran was inclined to believe it. "But I don't think that's the full truth. There's something else going on, family shit, maybe, but he won't tell me."

"Whatever it was, I hope it was worth the fifteen years. A year would be a long time for someone like him. Fifteen is going to be a lifetime, if he lasts that long," Pope sighed, scuffing his boots against the cement floor. "You really believe he'll be able to keep quiet about us for that long? Or are your feelings for him preventing you from thinking clearly on this?"

"I have given him plenty of reasons to have me locked up, Pope," Deran had never hurt anyone the way he hurt Adrian. "I put him through ten kinds of hell and he was solid through it all. He should have been calling the cops on me, but he never did. He walked away, but he never turned his back on me."

"What did you do?"

"Things that would make any normal, well-adjusted person run away screaming," It was just his luck that Adrian was just as fucked up as he was, just in a different way. "Come on, Pope, you know Adrian. He's been a part of me since before I could remember. You watched him grow up with me. You know who he is. Don't let Smurf try to distort history by claiming he's an outsider that has no idea what we are or what we'll do to him if he does talk. He's always known. He's always been loyal to me and to us."

"What do you need me to do, Deran?"

"Help me protect him from Smurf," All Deran needed was a little help, he couldn't do it by himself anymore. "Don't hurt him if he comes to you looking to fall on his sword."

"He was going to do that?" Pope quirked a brow, impressed or concerned, Deran couldn't tell.

"He was talking about it this morning," That's a good part of the reason Deran felt the need to get to Pope first. "He was gonna confess and let you do what Smurf wants you to do."

"We can't do anything to him while there's heat on him anyway," Pope reasoned. "It'll look suspicious if he goes missing at the same time the cops are pressing him about us."

"Adrian made the same argument when I told him he needed to leave town unless he wanted to be killed," Deran still believed getting him out of the town was the best course of action. "He doesn't want the cops looking at us for his disappearance."

"If he put as much thought into the decisions he makes for himself as he does the ones he makes with you in mind, he probably wouldn't be in the trouble he's in right now," Pope commented, a hint of fondness in his tone. "You know, convincing me not to go along with Smurf's plans for him doesn't actually save him. If you don't do it and I don't do it, she'll find someone else."

"You can tell her you'll do it, but say the same thing you just told me, he's got too much heat on him," They just needed to put a stay on Adrian's execution until Smurf was no longer around to order it. "Smurf's only got a couple of months left, right? Once she dies..."

"The only threat to your boyfriend will be prison time."

"I'm gonna handle that," He still had time to convince Livengood to put Adrian's deal back on the table. "Smurf already gotten to you? Am I just talking to dead air? Are you gonna hurt him?"

"If he hasn't said anything to the cops about us, Deran, I won't hurt him," Pope promised. "If Smurf talks to me, I won't take her at her word, not this time. I won't make the same mistake twice."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"The cops were trying to turn Cath. Smurf found out, brought it to me, made me believe that Cath had ratted, sent me to deal with her, and I did," Pope admitted, shame and remorse darkening his features. "But Cath didn't rat. The cops were pressing her, trying to get her turn, but she didn't give them anything."

"This is what Smurf does with anyone she thinks is pulling us away."

"You need to tell Craig what's going on with Adrian. We don't need any more secrets between us that Smurf could use against us. You need to go to his place," Pope advised him. "And you should warn him that Smurf's trying to clean house."

"You think she'll go after Renn too?" Deran wouldn't say that Craig and Renn were in love or anything, but the family unit they had become recently could be enough to set Smurf off. "Because of the baby?"

"We can't be sure what Smurf's doing. I don't even know if Smurf knows what she's doing," Pope groused, shaking his head. "When I say no more secrets, I mean between the three of us, you, me, and Craig. Not a word to J."

"Why?" He had no intention of telling J anything, but he was curious as to why Pope wanted to keep the kid out of the loop. "I know he's Smurf's boy, but is there something else going on?"

"He's up to something, can't be sure what, but we can't trust him."

"Okay."

* * *

Adrian always felt dirty after being accosted by the cops, he didn't have to think too hard on why that was. After his little chat with Pearce, he found himself in the shower at home, scrubbing his skin raw to rid himself of the ‘_ugh’_ feeling. Of course, showering in an empty house was proving to be bad luck, seeing as an unwanted guest was always lurking in the kitchen/dining area nearly every time he got out.

"I swear to God I locked that door," Adrian grunted as he adjusted the towel around his waist. "And we changed the locks after the last time you let yourself in with a key we never gave you."

"I know quite a few locksmiths," Smurf shrugged, unbothered by the steps he and Deran had taken to prevent her from entering their home uninvited. "So, you've been talking to Detective Pearce."

"Pearce has been talking to me," He was beginning to sound like a broken record to himself, having to repeat that with every person he spoke to. "I haven't said anything to him, but I'm sure you already know that."

"You may have convinced my son of that, but I'm not as naive as he is," Smurf tutted as she folded freshly cleaned laundry at the kitchen table. "I think you've been telling him things about my boys. Things you shouldn't even know about."

"Things about their unhealthy attachment to you?" Adrian was too tired to hold his tongue or keep up any pretense of politeness. "'Cause that's all common knowledge."

"It's not the time to be a smartass, baby," Smurf chastised him, discarding the laundry back into the basket. "You should be apologizing or begging for your life."

"I have nothing to apologize to you for. I haven't done anything to you or your family," He wasn't going to pretend like he had. "And you can ask your precious baby boy, he'll tell you I don't beg for anything."

"You've got Deran wrapped around your little finger, don't you?" Smurf looked at him with nothing short of disgust in her expression. "God knows what you do for him that's so good he would threaten his own mother to keep you safe."

"I give him the love and affection freely," Adrian didn't attach strings to those things like she did. "I never asked him to threaten you for me. I would never try to turn him against a member of his own family, that's your job."

"You think you're so much better than me--"

"No," The thought had never crossed his mind. "I think I treat Deran better than you."

"I'm his mother."

"That's just a title you hold," Adrian would call her a dictator before he ever referred to her as a mother. "A real mother, a real parent, wouldn't intentionally put their children through the kind of trauma you’ve subjected your children to."

"'Cause your parents were such saints," Smurf retorted. "Sending you to school wearing dirty clothes and with an empty stomach, putting cigarettes out on your arms, leaving bruises all over you."

"My parents were neglectful and abusive," Adrian had no illusion that they were anything but what they were. "I know that, they know that. No one was ever in denial about that."

"Deran asked me once, when you guys were little, why I didn't take you in like I had Baz," Smurf recalled. "You ever wonder why?"

"Unlike Baz, I didn't show up at your house crying whenever mommy and daddy hurt me," Adrian wore the tough guy skin better as a small child than he did an adult. "I didn't come looking to your for comfort. I didn't need you to make it all better."

"Baz was a whiner, wasn't he?" Smurf criticized her adopted son. “Always looking for the sympathy vote.”

"I never wanted you to take me in, Smurf," His home life had sucked, but it was still his. "You wouldn't have, because by the time Deran asked you to, you had already figured out that one day, he was going to choose between us. Even back then you were terrified that he would choose me."

"You think I was scared of you?" Smurf cackled, her scrutinizing gaze roving over his body. "You are the least terrifying person on the planet, baby."

"You've always been scared that I would try to take Deran away from you. You're proving that by ordering Deran to kill me for a crime I didn't even commit against your family," Adrian wasn't going to let her take him out believing she was getting one over on him. "You think you're pulling off some big scheme, but Deran and I have your number. We know this is about you and me and Deran. You always thought you would get Deran back someday, the way you had him when we were kids, but now you're dying and he's still with me. So you think, what, if you can't have him, neither can anyone else?"

"Something like that," Smurf picked her purse up off the counter, hitching it over her shoulder. "Pope will be around to talk to you soon."

"Looking forward to it."

* * *

Contacting Detective Pearce had been a risk, but Deran seemed to be in a risk-taking mood. He had threatened his mother, reached out to one brother for help, and come clean to his other brother about why he willing to take a bat to a cop outside a bar packed with law enforcement. Having Pearce meet him at The Drop seemed pretty low on the threat matrix after all that.

"I'm glad you called," Pearce slid onto a bar stool, obviously prepared for a much longer conversation than the one Deran was ready to have. "Things are getting mighty dangerous for your boyfriend."

"I know you pulled him over earlier," Deran had received a text about that shortly after his confrontation with Smurf. "So, you know that someone gave Smurf Adrian's name. You know there's a leak in your department."

"You want me to believe you don't know who Smurf's department contacts are?"

"Smurf doesn't share things like that with me," He was a grunt, not her number two. "What are you gonna do about it?"

"About the leak?" Pearce shrugged. "Without a name or anything to go on, there's not much I can do."

"You're telling me you can't figure out who accessed your files?" Deran didn't know whether to call bullshit or just slam the assholes face against the bar. "Fuck. You wonder why you can never make a case against us when you've got that kind of security."

"I thought you called me here because you were ready to talk, Mr. Cody," Pearce gave him an expectant look. "Why don't we get to that?"

"I don't have anything to say to you," He requested the detective’s presence to get something from him, not to give him anything. "You put Adrian in this position. A leak in your office has put him in danger. What are you going to do to fix that?"

"You want me to protect him," Pearce deduced, features softening. "Protective custody?"

"For him that would just be a cell block separate from gen-pop in prison," Deran was trying to keep Adrian out of jail, not send him to it sooner. "She could get to him there for the right price."

"You want something better, you're going to have to give me something," Pearce drummed his fingers on the bar. "Give me something good enough, I can get you both into witness protection. It keeps him out of jail, and gives you both a fresh start."

"He'd never agree to that."

"Sometimes it's better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission."

"I've stepped over that line one too many times with Adrian," He had learned his lesson about making decisions for Adrian without Adrian's input or consent. "I need to talk to him."

"I can see that you care about him very much, but not enough to make the hard choice to keep him safe," Pearce acknowledged thoughtfully. "His love for you is strong enough that he's willing to go to jail to protect it. I could've gotten him down to a year inside and a few years of probation. For you, he is willing to work with a public defender that can only plead him down to fifteen years. He'll be forty-two by the time he gets out. You gonna be waiting for him when you get out?"

"I need to talk to Adrian," If his and Pope's plan to wait Smurf out didn't work and he couldn't convince Adrian to leave town, then making a deal with Pearce might be the only option they had left. "I don’t have anything to say to you right now."

"When you do,” Pearce slid his business card across the bar. “Give me a call. I can protect both you and Adrian.”

* * *

Adrian had a lot of time to think once it was just him and an empty house again. He'd curled up in bed and stared up at the ceiling, hoping a solution to his problems would appear in the pattern of the wood panels. By the time telltale rumble of the Scouts engine signaled Deran's return home, Adrian had come to a few conclusions, but still had no definitive answers.

"I changed my mind," He announced to the approaching footsteps.

"About what?" Deran asked, kicking off his sneakers as he crossed the threshold into the room. "Locking doors? That back one was wide open."

"People seem to think our locked doors are just a suggestion," Adrian didn't see the point in flicking a deadbolt when the one person they were trying to keep out kept getting back in. "I changed my mind about handing myself over to Pope."

"He won't have you anyway," Deran murmured, the bed dipping under his weight. "Why'd you decide to change your mind?"

"I don't want to die," Prison wasn't much better of an option, but at least there was a light at the end of the tunnel in a release date. "I don't want to die for something I didn't even do."

"They way Smurf sees it, you did do it," Deran muttered, fitting himself beside his boyfriend on the bed. "You talked to the feds."

"Not about you guys. Fuck. I tried to keep you as far away from my problems as possible," That was the whole reason he didn't tell Deran about his arrest to begin with. "I didn't involve you. I was handling it myself. I kept you out of it until the cop with a hard-on for your family stuck his nose in my business."

"I know."

"I had my problems fixed. It wasn't perfect, but it was minimal time. Then Pearce decided I was prime target to screw with and I got fucked," He would have done year or two, had Pearce not had his deal yanked. He might as well have never made the deal in the first place for what it was worth to him now. "My problems are not yours. You are not getting shafted for that. The cops aren't going to screw you guys just to get to me."

"I know that, Adrian," Deran repeated through gritted teeth. "What do you want me to say?"

"I made a mistake working for Jack, I'm going to do the time for that. It sucks, but I accept that," He was past the point of trying to wiggle his way out of his jail sentence. "I didn't turn on your family when the cops offered me a new deal. Pearce could have offered me full immunity and I would have told him to go to hell. I am not going to let your mother put a price on my head because I chose to take the hit instead of sending her and the rest of your family down the river."

"This morning we agreed that she wants you dead for different reasons," Deran reminded him. "You talking to the feds is just an excuse."

"If Smurf wants to sic her dogs on me, fine," Adrian had been waiting for her to pull a stunt like that with him since he was a kid. "But she at least needs to be honest about why she's doing it."

"It would be harder to get Pope on board if she told him she just wanted you out of my life," Deran acknowledged, adjusting the pillow beneath his head. "He's going to make her think he's going to take care of you, but he's on our side. I explained things to him. He gets it."

"Guess my sister was right," A glimmer of hope settled in Adrian's chest. "He can be reasoned with."

"It's not going to stop Smurf from sending someone else after you," Deran dashed his hopes with a single sentence. "If she thinks we're playing beat the clock, waiting for her to die, she could send the Trujillos after you."

"Great," That's exactly what he needed, a street gang who saw him as a nice payday. "She sure is acting threatened for someone who just today told me I was least scary person on the planet."

"She was here today?"

"I might have mouthed off to her a little."

"Yeah?" Deran smirked. "Me too."

"You still have a bigger problem than Smurf's beef with me, Deran. Your family still has a rat problem," The consequences of which could cause more damage to the Cody family than Adrian ever could. "The cops talked to me, but when they did, it was only about you and Ox's death. Pearce only mentioned you pulled jobs with your family in passing. All I told him and Livengood about you is that you were a guy who owned a bar."

"You kept it to my legitimate stuff."

"I couldn’t just plead ignorance about you entirely. So, yeah, I kept it to your legitimate business,” It would've been too easy for the cops to call bullshit if he pretended to have no knowledge of Deran’s business whatsoever. "Does that seem like enough to spook Smurf's source inside the police department? Someone _**denying**_ any knowledge of your family’s alleged criminal activities is a red flag?"

"When Smurf told J someone was talking, she said it was to the cops," Deran clarified his mother's original claims. "When she confronted me about you, she used the term feds. She knows you're not our rat."

"We've established that."

"If Smurf has enough juice to find out you're talking to the feds, then she's got to have the name of the person talking to the cops."

"She came to you about me, because she thought you already knew. She likes to think of me as just your live-in piece of ass, someone expendable," Adrian wasn't family to the Codys, wasn't someone they would mourn or miss, at least in Smurf's mind. "What does that tell you about the person who's ratting on your family?"

"It’s someone she wants to handle herself or someone close to us, someone she thinks we'd hesitate to hurt," Deran paused, taking a moment to consider the facts laid out and come to a determination. "He's family."

"He?"

"It's J."

"Julia's kid?" Adrian didn't like the kid, but he found that hard to believe. "He's living the highlife. He's set to takeover for Smurf. Why would he kneecap himself like that?"

"He's pissed off because we didn't save Julia," Deran mumbled, digging his nails into the palm of his hands. "He wants to avenge her death or something."

"You were just a kid when Smurf kicked Julia out, it wasn't your fault," Adrian could understand J's anger, but taking it out on the brothers didn't seem right. "It's not you he wants to punish, it's Smurf. He takes you, Craig, and Pope away from her, and she has nothing. She loses her meal ticket, her way of life. It would be almost impossible for her to start over, especially now that she's sick."

"She's dying. If he wants to see her suffer, he's going to have to move up the timetable. He doesn’t have the time to steal the business from her, so maybe turning rat is the quickest way to get what he wants," Deran surmised. "It's not like it would be the first time he's ratted. He did it after the first job he helped us with, but then he saw the cash and changed his mind. He warned us like a fucking hour before the cops raided our place. Then he acted like...acted like he was some goddamn hero for not going through with it, and Smurf treated him like one."

"What are you going to do, Deran?" Adrian didn't need details, he just needed enough to know how to care for Deran in the aftermath. "He's your nephew. Your dead sister's child."

"I'm not going to let him destroy my family."

"We don't know for sure he's the rat," Adrian didn't want Deran to make a move he couldn't take back without confirmation from a reputable source. "You need to take what you have to Craig and Pope. The three of you need to decide _**together**_ how to proceed from there."

"I'll talk to my brothers," Deran agreed, resting a hand on Adrian's thigh. "For the record, though, this isn't a bigger problem, it's a different problem."

"It’s one more problem we don't have a solid solution for."

"I might have a solution to one of our problems," Deran stretched back out on the bed. "Is there any way I could talk you into protective custody?"

"Protective custody is isolation," Adrian liked to believe he did well on his own, but his recent actions had proved otherwise. "I'd be all by myself, waiting for Smurf to figure out which guard could be paid to look the other way while another prisoner shanked me."

"How about the two of us go into witness protection?"

"That would mean both of us leaving behind our families," Adrian couldn't imagine never being able to see his sister again. "You need your brothers and they need you, just like Jess and I need each other. We wouldn't be okay without them."

"Well, then, until Smurf's gone, you're not allowed to be alone," Deran decided, tugging on Adrian's shirt until he was lying next to him. "If you're not with me, you're with Pope."

"Oh boy, that sounds like fun."


End file.
